Graham Hunter

IF CLUBS earned points for their managers' ability to generate laugh-out-loud anecdotes, or controversy, then Queens Park Rangers would be challenging for the Premier League title.

Instead Henry James Redknapp, aka ''Harry'', this weekend leads the troubled London outfit into a derby match against Spurs, the club which sacked him, knowing that the ''Hoops'' are going to be one of the most frustrating, dangerous and potentially embarrassing challenges of his 30-year managerial career.

Really, it should be a thumping. QPR has posted the kind of figures this season which, based on all the previous Premier League stats, 100 per cent guarantees it'll be relegated.

Moreover, since 2007, while a variety of part-owners, including formula one tycoon Bernie Ecclestone, Benetton mogul Flavio Briatore, billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and wealthy Malaysian Tony Fernandes have all had their shot at making risible decisions and alienating the fans, Rangers have been through 12 different managers.

Enter Harry.

Those of you who are old enough (or who earn money from the oil industry) will remember ''Red'' Adair - a fearless Texan who was constantly paid a fortune to control and extinguish oil-well fires, including one corker off the coast of Victoria in 1968.

Advertisement

Redknapp is his soccer equivalent. Bursting with more character and quips than a Quentin Tarantino film-fest, he is on the speed-dial of every agent, every chairman, every journalist.

The agents want to sell him ''misunderstood'' players, chairmen perpetually want him to save their bacon and reporters need ''H'' like a tired straggler in the Sahara needs a cold beer.

You will now receive updates fromSport Newsletter

Sport Newsletter

He's earned a reputation that he performs sporting alchemy - taking soccer's basest metals and making them noble.

A 9-0 defeat in his first match in charge of lowly Bournemouth became, within months, a shock FA Cup win over Manchester United. He took West Ham to fifth in the Premier League and European competition, saved Portsmouth from what seemed certain relegation and, in due course, eliminated United again en route to winning Pompey its first FA Cup final since before the war.

Spurs, Saturday's opponents, were a Premier League punching bag, last on the table when he took them over - but in the Champions League quarter-final under his guidance the season before last.

Part of his attraction is that Redknapp comes from soccer royalty. In the middle '60s, London was swinging. The Beatles had moved there, the Rolling Stones were from there, the Mini Cooper and the mini skirt were on every street.

Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton were the world's most famous models, West Ham won the Cup Winners' Cup at Wembley, then the following year, its three most famous pupils - Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst - scored or made goals as England won the 1966 World Cup final.

Back at West Ham, Redknapp was their teammate and drinking partner.

In fact, he's fond of the story of how, after training that Christmas in 1966, he, Moore, Peters and a couple of others went to the pub. One drink became seven while Moore's wife, Tina, phoned the bar manager again and again demanding to speak to her husband and ordering him to come home because the England captain had the turkey for the next day's Christmas dinner in his car. Finally, she snapped and phoned Moore's mother who stormed down to the pub and hauled the man who at the time was England's greatest player out by the ear while giving Redknapp and co an earful.

Different times.

Strangely enough, with these three wonderful players at the club, the Hammers' ensuing few years were brutally unsuccessful and Harry's perpetual crack ever since is that ''… it shows how bad the other eight of us were''.

Which isn't true. As a winger, he won the junior version of the UEFA European Championship and his genes produced Jamie Redknapp, who was such an elegant and intelligent player for Liverpool and Spurs.

But his alchemy, crucially, extends to individual players, not just clubs. When Paolo Di Canio was the all-time outcast of English soccer, banned for pushing referee Paul Allcock to the ground, only Redknapp was willing to take a risk on him.

Once signed for West Ham, the Italian was brilliant and the eccentricities the two men shared were utterly blotted out by mutual talent.

Ask Redknapp now and he'll say that Di Canio was ''a genius'' and the most talented player he ever worked with.

I recall Di Canio being asked about Redknapp and relating that he was a manager whose professionalism, ideas, creativity and tactical nous were massively underrated. Di Canio preferred working for ''H'' over being coached by either Marcello Lippi or Fabio Capello.

Redknapp reinvented John Hartson, gave him confidence, unlocked his goalscoring potential and coped with the Welshman trying to kick Eyal Berkovic's head off in a training ground flare-up. Then sold him on for good money.

The rest of England thought Kanu was washed up, Redknapp made him Admiral at Portsmouth and then, before the FA Cup final, simply told him, ''King, you are the best - they can't touch you''.

Of course, the Nigerian went out and scored the winner at Wembley.

Even accounting for the odd transfer market move that fizzles out, these three are just a tiny part of a long shopping list of successes.

What I defy even his critics to deny is that Redknapp knows footballers and, more importantly, wants to cram his teams full of as many players of skill, flair, intelligence and technique as the budget will allow.

Sometimes Britain will know about it, promptly.

He is famous for being media-friendly and it's a standard joke now that if he happens to be out of work during one of the European transfer windows (from May to the end of August or the entire month of January) then he drives around looking for a Sky Sports camera to roll down the window of his four-wheel-drive and give an interview to anyway.

Sometimes Britain won't know about it as testified to when Rangers were desperately trying to off-load their moody but previously prolific Italian striker Marco Negri.

In Scotland it was a massive story, full of accusations and irascibility. A reporter followed the rumour that he was having a trial at West Ham's training ground and turned up there. ''Harry, do you have Marco Negri on trial?'' he demanded. ''Who? … Marco who …? Nah son, you've got it wrong this time, nah … Marco bleedin' who …''

He was beginning to convince. Then, just in the distance the reporter spotted a strapping Italian with long, dark flowing hair taking pot shots at the goalkeeper. ''Look, Harry … that guy over there … behind you … Marco Negri!!"

Harry: ''Ohhhhhhhhh, Marco … yeah, right Marco Negri.''

Pretence gone, smokescreen lifted … rumbled. But you get the sly Redknapp grin, the promise of a cup of tea (or stronger) and a couple of great anecdotes and all's forgiven.

This is Mr London. An Arsenal supporter and Highbury attender while a kid. Then a Spurs trainee, West Ham hall of famer (only the club's eighth manager in 93 years when he took over), Spurs boss (they'd be in the Champions League this year had Chelsea not won that crazy final in Munich against Bayern last May) and now QPR boss. Also Mr Survivor. A World Cup 1990 car crash left five men dead, including close friends, and Redknapp, pulled clear by another chum who survived, was thought to be dead when the emergency services arrived.

Last year he beat tax evasion charges in Southwark Crown Court and despite the utter shock of Spurs then sacking him, here he is, back in the game again, and starting 2013 with a 1-0 win at Chelsea to give the Hoops some faint hope of Premier League survival.

He's not everybody's cup of tea but I'd walk the length or breadth of England for a couple of brews and a day of anecdotes with one of the great, gifted, interesting and now very rare characters of the English game.

At White Hart Lane on Saturday, all should hail Harry. Whether or not he saves QPR this season, when he's gone there will be a hole the size of Hobart in Premier League life.